


a downtown storm with Aires rising

by blackkat



Series: Crazy=Genius [4]
Category: Bleach, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Light Hurt/Comfort, via dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 01:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16461038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: A conversation about dragons opens up some new doors. Maybe a few old ones, too.





	a downtown storm with Aires rising

“Bazz, are you working tomorrow?” Harry calls from the kitchen.

Bazz chucks another sock into Harry's pile of laundry, then tosses the empty laundry bag over the top of the closet door to languish. “Yeah,” he calls back, “but only until two. I've got the breakfast shift.”

There are quick footsteps, and then a moment later Harry leans around the edge of the bedroom door, his snowy owl on his shoulder. “Ron's meeting one of his brothers in Diagon Alley,” he says. “If we’re still there when they're done…”

He trails off, clearly hesitating over asking, and Bazz snorts. “Yeah, we can see them,” he says, and grins when Harry's face lights up. “And we can hang around and wait, even if they're not done then. I need a new book anyway.”

“Like, a book on magic?” Harry asks curiously, and Bazz rolls his eyes.

“The whole world isn't school, you know,” he says dryly. “No, the wizarding world has some pretty wild novels and shit. There wasn’t a lot to do in Silbern when we were off, so I guess it turned into a habit.”

He only realizes what he’s said a moment after he says it, but Harry jumps on the name without pause. “Silbern? Is that where you lived before?”

Bazz hesitates. It would be easy enough to say yes. It might even be _right_. But Harry says _where you lived_ like a synonym for home, and Bazz hasn’t had one of those since Yhwach conquered his country. And—he probably shouldn’t say too much about the Quincy, since he’s kept it to himself for so long already, but—

“Silbern was a palace,” he finally says. “I was—the emperor had an army, with twenty-six commanders, and I was one of them.”

Harry's eyes widen all at once, and his fingers slip off the doorframe. “You were in an _army_?”

“Is it really that surprising?” Bazz asks, and rubs a hand over his loose hair with a grimace. He’d kind of thought it was all too obvious. He hasn’t known anything but the Sternritter since he was a teenager, and it’s been a very long time since then.

Harry pauses, frowning a little, and then shrugs. “I didn’t even know there _were_ armies in the wizarding world,” he says. “But in the Muggle world they're all…uniformed and the same.”

“Disciplined,” Bazz says dryly. “I'm pretty sure that’s the word you're looking for.” And the lower ranks of Soldat _were_ disciplined, but the Sternritter were all given their ranks _because_ of their differences. Letting them do what they wanted was better for Yhwach in the long run, and inspired a hell of a lot more fear of them than if they’d all been cookie cutter similar.

Harry gives him a faintly sheepish grin, then changes subjects completely and says, “I’ll owl Ron, then. Thanks, Bazz!”

Hedwig hoots happily as Harry turns and heads for the kitchen at a run, and Bazz props his shoulder against the edge of the closet and tugs at his hair, frowning when he notices it’s long enough to fall past his eyes. He wants to sigh, but it’s all tangled up in his throat, caught on the memory of Silbern’s cold halls and glittering iciness. The palace was an unwelcoming, unfriendly place, full of backstabbers and petty power games, and he hated it, but—

Almost a thousand years there altogether, and Bazz looks around his tiny flat and wonders how it’s even possible to live anywhere else. His memories of his parents’ house are foggy, faded practically to nothing, and he remembers the ruins more clearly than the interior. Silbern was everything, and the occasional scouting missions to Hueco Mundo or Soul Society, even to the World of the Living—they make up brief seconds compared to all the time Bazz spent in the palace.

At this point he should have grown some reluctant fondness for it at least, but…Silbern always suited Jugram far more than it did Bazz.

Shaking himself, Bazz closes the closet door most of the way, then calls, “Your laundry’s on the bed. Wash your hands before you grab it.”

“All right!” Harry calls back. “Thanks, Bazz!”

The adjustment to living like a person and not one of Yhwach’s soldiers is still so strange, Bazz thinks, casting a glance over the tiny bedroom. It’s—unsettling. Like getting a tooth knocked out, and having that space, raw and a little painful, but also entirely unexpected. Fighting is what Bazz is good at. It’s what he knows. Folding laundry and making plans and holding a steady job, making sure Harry's fed and the owl has treats and there's enough food in the cupboards that they don’t have to live off toast—Bazz doesn’t know if he’ll ever quite manage to adjust.

Taking a breath, he turns, tries to think what else needs doing right now. Too much and not enough all at once—life is a distraction, but rarely enough of one. Closer, now, with Harry here, but still.

London is unfamiliar in all the worst ways, and Bazz hasn’t rearranged himself enough to fit inside its confines yet. Someday, certainly, but…not yet.

 

 

“Harry!” Ron calls, waving, and Harry waves back, pushing through the crowd in the street in front of the ice cream parlor with a grin. Bazz follows in his wake, keeping half an eye on their surroundings, but no one seems to be looking at Harry. Scrimgeour’s words about Harry being high-profile are making him a little twitchy, even if everyone here seems entirely inclined to mind their own business. Harry's gotten a few looks just being at Vance’s, and Bazz doesn’t want to tempt fate.

There's no threat, though, at least not an immediate one. Just Harry practically colliding with his redheaded friend, both of them grinning and laughing, and a stocky man with the same hair as Ron is just rising to his feet, looking amused. He offers Bazz a smile, and Bazz gives him a crooked smirk in return.

“Hey,” the man says cheerfully. “Charlie Weasley. So you're the one that’s got Ginny up in raptures about dyeing her hair?”

Bazz snorts, but takes the hand that’s offered to him—the left hand, which Charlie does without hesitation, and it’s a small gesture but not a common one, in Bazz's experience. There's almost _always_ some awkwardness, but…not now, and he appreciates it. “Bazzard Black,” he returns. “Call me Bazz. And it’s not dyed, it’s natural.”

Charlie laughs. “I don’t think that’ll stop her,” he admits, and as Harry and Ron surface from their greeting he offers a wave. “Hi, Harry, it’s nice to finally meet you. Ron's not stopped talking about you all month.”

“ _Charlie_ ,” Ron complains, the tips of his ears red, and Harry shoves his glasses up his nose, smiling.

“Nice to meet you, too,” he answers. “How’s Norbert?”

“Pretty sure it’s Norberta, actually,” Charlie says easily, and drops back into his seat. There are burn scars all over his hands, and Bazz casts a glance at them as he sits too, a little wary. Charlie is muscled in the way of a bare-handed brawler, his skin so freckled he looks tanned, and he moves like he’s conscious of each motion. Not a fighter, though, Bazz thinks, because he can't help himself. Or not _primarily_ a fighter, at least.

“Here,” he tells Harry, pulling the day’s tips from his uniform pocket and shoving them across the table. “Go get yourselves some ice cream.”

“Do you want anything?” Harry asks, but he takes the money and glances over at the shop, already distracted.

Bazz raises a brow at Charlie, who shakes his head, and then answers, “I'm fine. After the hollandaise incident I don’t even want to _look_ at food.”

Harry grins, and there's a shade of mischief to the expression that makes his whole face look more animated. “Giselle knows a lot of curses,” he says, with something like admiration.

With a snort, Bazz leans back, trying to ease a bit of the tension from his shoulders. It’s one thing to be in Emmeline’s, the world relatively contained, with people Bazz is fairly sure are allies, but it’s another entirely to be out in the open, his back to the street. He can see the reflection of the crowd in the window, but it still puts his teeth on edge. “Yeah, she’s got a mouth like a tar pit. She’ll teach you anything you didn’t pick up today if you ask, too.”

Ron immediately looks interested, nudging Harry, and Harry drags him towards the shop without pause, leaning in and speaking in a voice low enough that Bazz can't quite make out the words. It’s probably for the best, really.

“I hope Ron remembers Mum will wash his mouth out with soap the minute he _thinks_ about cursing,” Charlie says in amusement. Blue eyes flicker over Bazz, but they don’t linger in any of the regular places people get hung up, like his hair or his missing arm. Instead, Charlie’s gaze settles on Bazz's necklace, and he tips his head a little. “That’s a cross, right? Are you…?”

Bazz closes his fingers over the Quincy pendant, sliding it back under his shirt. “No,” he says, because however Charlie intends to finish that sentence, it’s probably wrong. “Family heirloom, that’s all.”

Charlie takes the change of subject easily, the brightness of his grin not even flickering. “Right, the Blacks. Mum still can't believe Iola’s great-grandson turned up.”

For a moment, Bazz wavers between angry grief and fond remembrance. The good memories win, thankfully—he’s had too much experience with the bad. “Yeah,” he says, and can't help a small smile, thinking of his parents, his mother with her fall of night-black hair and her grey eyes, his father lifting her right off her feet to whirl her around as she laughed. Bazz might not remember a lot, but he still has them. He still has those images, and it’s not enough when he could have had _them_ if Yhwach hadn’t come, but…it’s enough for how things stand. “She was…pretty great.”

Charlie smiles like he knows what those words mean coming from someone like Bazz. “Dad wanted to come say hello, since you're related and all, but he had to get back to the Ministry. Something about batteries.”

Bazz has encountered wizarding views of Muggle objects enough to guess that it’s not a good thing that batteries ended up at the Ministry. “Later, then,” he says, and takes another glance at Harry and Ron, who are talking with the shop owner still. Safe enough, even if it puts Bazz's guard up.

When he looks back, though, Charlie is watching him carefully, gaze a little sharper than Bazz is comfortable with. He doesn’t say anything about it, just props a foot on the edge of the closest empty chair and offers, “Ron said you worked nearby?”

“Yeah, at Emmaline’s,” Bazz says, and glances at Charlie’s burn scars again. “If you were a Muggle I’d say you were a welder, but—”

Charlie grins, bright and enthusiastic, and raises his arm like he’s showing off one of the long marks. “Nah, dragons,” he corrects. “I work on a preserve in Romania. Just took a week off before breeding season starts.”

Bazz's relationship with fire might be fucked all to hell, but there's still a twist in his chest that feels a lot like envy. “ _Dragons_?” he repeats. “Fuck, that’s a job you can do?” Because if Ryūjin Jakka didn’t manage to burn him out of existence, a dragon probably wouldn’t be able to, either, and a flicker of excitement is rising through Bazz's veins, like taking one of Bambietta’s dares and knowing the price of losing but throwing himself into it anyway.

Charlie laughs. “The best job,” he confirms. “We’ve mostly got the European breeds, but there are a couple of Chinese Fireballs up in the forests, and a pair of Peruvian Vipertooths up in the mountains. If you're ever in Romania I can give you a tour. There's an old Welsh Green who likes to cozy up to visitors and get her scales scratched.”

Given his clear fondness for his dragons, Charlie would probably take Bazz's immediate reaction of _I want to fight one_ poorly. He reins himself in, files the thought away for a day when he’s particularly frustrated, and subsides with a huff. “Shit, some people get all the luck.”

Charlie’s grin is a little smug. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Dad can keep his Ministry job. I've got mine, and it’s a hell of a lot more fun than sitting behind a desk.”

Bazz appreciates Vance and her kindness, but he also chafes a little, going from soldier to waiter like he has. Vance was willing to hire him when no one else would, given his looks and his personality and his handicap, but Bazz hardly wants to stay at the restaurant for the rest of his life. And—

It’s a surprise, mostly, to realize that. He’s never actually taken the time to consider it before, never bothered; it’s a living, and it’s reliable, and that’s been enough so far. But Charlie clearly loves his job in a way Bazz has never felt, and it’s…something to be envious of, maybe.

Thinking that there could be something else for him, something he’ll _enjoy_ , is strange, almost unsettling. Bazz shifts in his chair, checks on Harry again, and pauses, watching him and Ron where they're sitting at a table near the window, digging into their ice creams and talking excitedly.

A month ago, Bazz would never have thought he could enjoy having someone dependent on him. He’d have laughed at anyone who suggested he might adopt a kid in any fashion, and probably kicked their ass, too, for the temerity. And, two years ago, he’d have burned anyone who said he’d flee the Wandenreich for the human world, leaving a broken kingdom behind him.

Maybe, looking at it like that, a change could be good.

“I mean it,” Charlie says, and when Bazz raises a brow at him he adds, “About coming to see the preserve. Harry’d get a kick out of it too, I'm sure.”

“We will,” Bazz says, and means it. “Maybe not this year, though.”

“Whenever you’d like. I've got no plans to leave,” Charlie promises easily. He pauses, eyes drifting over to check on Ron and Harry, and then says idly, “Dad said there were rumors going around the Ministry that Sirius Black’s case is being reopened.”

Bazz doesn’t let himself tense, tries not to twitch. “Are there?” he asks shortly.

Charlie gives him an amused look, but doesn’t press. “Apparently,” he says cheerfully. “I was just there to check about a complaint I filed. About the dragons they keep in the bank.”

Bazz blinks, glances down the street towards the looming white marble of Gringotts. “You mean underground?” he asks, frowning, because that can't be a lot of room. Can't be very safe, either—Bazz knows what being a dog on a chain feels like, and maybe it’s stupid to compare himself to a dragon and the goblins to Yhwach, but it’s automatic.

“Yeah,” Charlie says, displeased. “There aren’t any dragon welfare laws yet, so there's nothing they're willing to do, but I keep trying.”

He really is fond of dragons, Bazz thinks, watching him. It’s…interesting. “One person can't change anything,” he says, though, because if his life has proved anything at all, it’s that.

Charlie laughs, warm and honestly amused. “It’s not just me, though. A bunch of us dragon-keepers do it every time we’re near the Ministry. And maybe one person can't change anything, but a few working together have a good chance, yeah?”

The way Kurosaki and Ishida and their friends managed to take out Yhwach, Bazz thinks, and it’s only a little bitter. He and Jugram had planned—

Well. _Bazz_ had planned, and Jugram went along with him, right up until Yhwach told him he was special and he promptly left Bazz bleeding in the dust.

It’s not a terrible thing to be reminded of, though. Once upon a time Bazz knew how to work with people, knew how to rely on someone besides himself. A thousand years surrounded by near-enemies changed that, but…maybe it’s something he can get back.

“What are the European breeds?” Bazz asks instead of lingering on the notion. “I only know the Chinese Fireballs.”

Charlie lights up, pulling out his wand. A hard flick calls up a dozen little figures on the tabletop, dragons that lift and flap their wings and roar at each other, and Bazz leans forward to get a better look. He might be vaguely skeptical of the wizarding world as a whole, but magic is still pretty cool.

“This one’s a Ukrainian Ironbelly,” Charlie says, nudging it over with the tip of his wand, and it turns and breathes out a stream of fire that Bazz can tell isn't quite real. “We’ve probably got a dozen of them, and they're the largest dragons. Nasty when they're mad, but they’re like big cats, I swear—”

Well. Bazz has definitely spent worse afternoons.

 

 

Carefully, quietly, Bazz pulls Harry's door shut, watching the lump on the bed for any signs of movement. There aren’t any, thankfully, and Bazz closes it the rest of the way, then steps back. He has a call to make, and even though it twists through his stomach like nerves, like grim anticipation, he’s going to do it. Harry doesn’t need to get woken up if things go wrong, though, and if they go _really_ wrong Bazz should have enough time to get him out of the apartment, to get them somewhere safe. Emmeline’s, maybe, or Giselle’s apartment; she’d mock him, but she’d take care of Harry if it came down to that.

He picks up the phone, weighing it for a moment, then grits his teeth and punches in the number he’s kept in his memory for over a year now. Just in case, he’d always thought, and this isn't anywhere close to the circumstances he imagined, but it’s as good a reason as any, really.

It’s after seven in the morning in Japan, early but hopefully not too early. Bazz doesn’t quite hold his breath as the phone rings, but it’s a near thing. He has to be careful of his grip on the phone, doesn’t want to hold too tight in case he crushes the receiver, but it’s hard. He can feel the tension sliding down his spine, winding tighter, and sparks of reishi flicker around him, instinctively pulled close as­—

“Hello!” an obscenely cheerful voice says, and Bazz grimaces before he can help himself. Calling up one of the Special War Powers seems ten times more idiotic than it already did, suddenly.

“Urahara,” he says shortly, even as he wonders if he can get away with hanging up right now.

Silence on the other end, startled and tense. And then, with a chuckle, Urahara offers, “Quincy. Lieutenant Abarai was looking for you rather frantically, in the aftermath.”

Bazz closes his eyes, not entirely sure he wants to know that. Renji was one of the better Shinigami, and his fashion sense was at least good, but—they were enemies.

“I thought my chances of survival would go up if I put some distance between me and the Seireitei,” he says roughly. “There wasn’t a lot of time to waste.”

“I suppose not,” Urahara says, sounding amused. “And yet you're calling me when you must be aware of my renewed relationship with Soul Society.”

“Yeah, I'm aware,” Bazz says dryly. “You were one of the Special War Powers for a reason. But I'm not calling about Soul Society.”

“No, I don’t suppose you are,” Urahara says, light and almost teasing. “Who can I connect you to, Sternritter H?”

There's a sound in the background, surprise and a demand tangled together, but Bazz ignores that. “It’s just Bazz-B,” he says. “There aren’t any Sternritter to be a part of anymore, and I don’t exactly want that shit back.”

A laugh, lightly airy. “A good choice, a good choice. But you do want _something_ , don’t you?”

Bazz breathes in, breathes out. Grips the phone, and asks, “You still friendly with those Arrancar from the war?”

The startled silence is almost satisfying. Bazz is pretty sure that not many people ever manage to catch Urahara Kisuke off-guard. “I believe I could get a message across, if necessary,” Urahara says finally, and there's a click like a fingernail tapping the phone. “Though I feel I should warn you, Bazz-B—Ichigo is also rather fond of them, so if this is a hunting mission, you may want to rethink your goals.”

Bazz makes a sound of annoyance over the line. “I don’t want to _hunt_ them,” he snaps. “I want them to help me wreck some fucked-up shit and kick some soul-stealing freak ass.”

Urahara laughs, bright and startled. “Well,” he says, and there's a note of unholy amusement in the word. “I think I know exactly who will be of the most help to you. Do you have coordinates for where to send them?”

There's another demand for explanation in the background, but both Urahara and Bazz ignore it. “Yeah,” Bazz says. “London. Peckham. Send them somewhere secluded and I’ll pick them up.”

There's a light hum, thoughtful and calculating. “Give me three hours,” Urahara says. “Then I’ll get back to you with a location and a time.”

Bazz breathes out, rubs the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Thanks,” he says gruffly. “I owe you one.”

“I’ll make a note,” Urahara tells him cheerfully, and hangs up.


End file.
